


From The Ashes

by justscribbling



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Character Study, Oneshot, Post Finale, season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 13:50:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1820635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justscribbling/pseuds/justscribbling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because just as Oliver Queen's missing five years had forged him into a different man, Slade's own five years had broken and remolded him into a different man, too. // Or the time I sat down to write an Olicity fic, and my Inner Writer went, "HAHAHA, NOPE."</p>
            </blockquote>





	From The Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a [fanart](http://inkstainsandbattythings.tumblr.com/post/86470621430/there-is-a-pleasure-in-being-mad-which-none-but) (by [rotten-apples](http://rotten-apples.deviantart.com/) on DeviantArt).

No one came. 

No guards. No janitors. Not even a medical attendant when he slammed his fist into the walls of rock, repeatedly, and split the skin over his knuckles. He only heard the soft _shtick_ rend the air before the pinprick of a needle in his arm, and he was out. He woke to find the blood on his hand dried and flaking.

A warning? An instruction? Perhaps both.

Meals came three times a day. No tray. No utensils. The food was always arranged neatly on a sterile metal slab that slid out of the concrete wall. There wasn't even a cup. His drinking water came from the small sink embedded in the wall.

A ceiling light flickered once a day, signaling a five minute shower at one corner of his cell about to begin. Water rained down from the ceiling and drained through the edges of the floor where it met the walls, even though his fingers never found an opening and his eyes never saw a gap. The same metal slab that delivered his food, also delivered a change of clothes.

There was very little that he could move or damage in his cell. And he didn't doubt there was very little in this prison that wasn't covered by the security cameras, if anything.

So he marked the days by the routine set out for him. He slept. He ate. He showered. He exercised.

And he never stopped thinking.

He may be trapped in this facility right now, but it had nothing-- _nothing_ on the mental prison in which he had been trapped by over the past five years. A prison made up of thoughts that tormented him, taunted him, whispered in his nightmares, and seduced him with desires. Thoughts that were twisted by the _mirakuru_ that ran through his body, but after five years, he knew _\-- knew_ it wasn't the _mirakuru_ anymore.

A small part of him knew his mind was broken. No cure could fix that. No, no _antidote_ \-- he felt his upper lip curl in contempt at the thought-- could _take_ that from him.

Because just as Oliver Queen's missing five years had forged him into a different man, Slade's own five years had broken and remolded him into a different man, too.

Because of _her_ , he'd been remade.

He knew it wasn't really her. The Shado who had been his companion for the past five years wasn't the same Shadow who had died on Lian Yu. The kid had been right when he'd said she wouldn't have wanted vengeance. Of course not. Not _her. That_ Shado had been light incarnate. Fierce and loyal. Strong and pure.

That was the bitter joke, Slade thought. The Shado Oliver spoke of no longer had anything to do with his promise. That Shado was dead.

His allegiance was to _her_. The woman who was like a dark phoenix, rising from the ashes, sweeping fire in her wake.

Slade closed his eyes and he could see her. The slender woman, still so full of grace and strength. Smiling at him. Loving him. Comforting him. Showing him truths. And inviting him to love her. This new Shado was darkness incarnate and she had taught him so much.

 

***

 

_"I'm sorry." Slade barely got the words out through clenched teeth. He was hunched over; elbows dug into his side and hands balled into fists. Every nerve and fiber in his body was pulled taut. He was almost afraid to breathe, afraid that the tiny movement would shatter him and let the wind scatter pieces of him to all corners of the world._

_It was a rare moment of clarity._

_There was something seriously fucked up with him. Back on that ship… What the hell had happened on that ship?_

_Slade dropped to his knees and his hands jerked up. The fingers of his right hand shook as they hovered over the space where his right eye should have been. With another trembling jerk, he curled his fingers and shoved his knuckles against his temples._

Ach _, but he'd loved her. He had loved her. A sob clawed at his throat. He'd failed her. He hadn't even been there. He hadn't --_

_"It wasn't your fault." Her voice was soft. His gaze snapped up, and she was there. Smiling at him. Compassionate. Gentle._

_"It wasn't your fault," she repeated. With her gentle strength, she absolved him._

 

***

 

_"It was Oliver's fault."_

Over the years, she would show him different versions of that night. Some versions had Oliver looking regretful and remorseful. In other versions his eyes had been wide open and clear, aware of his choice.

Sometimes he made the choice simply by saying "I choose Sara." Occasionally, when Shado felt she needed to make the point plain, Oliver picked up the gun from Ivo's hands and shot her himself.

It was always Oliver's fault. He chose. Willingly. Eagerly. Dismissively. Knowingly.

Each time Shado gave him her memories, it wrecked him. But she was always there to soothe the pain, to piece him back together again. Many times she caressed his face, allowed her fingers to linger over the eye patch, and kissed his brow.

 _"It's alright," she whispered. "It's alright. I needed to be reborn. To be with you._ " _Her voice drew him away from the madness. "It's alright. We're together now. And together we will make Oliver pay."_

 

***

 

When he found himself staring at the boy from across a street, she was by his side. His constant. She had understood that he had needed to find the boy, and had said nothing of his mercurial efforts. Even a year after escaping Lian Yu, he still struggled to focus or control himself.

_"The man who belonged in this life is dead," she finally spoke. Pity and compassion lined her face. "There is no place for you here now."_

_His son laughed, joking with another young boy. Joe had his laugh, the one he'd inherited from his own father. He never really laughed like that anymore._

_"You died on that island with me." She leaned toward him, her breath against his chest._

_He heard her. He knew she was right. But he couldn't look away. This was his son. He'd finally found him. His Joe. The little boy he'd wrestled with. The baby he'd cradled with so much joy. His--_

_Shado stepped in front of him, obscuring his view. Her lips thinned and her gaze was hard. "If you stay here, you will destroy him. Burn him. Torture him. Kill him." She bit each word off with an almost savage growl. "Is that what you want, Slade? Do you want to damn him the way we are damned?"_

_His eye shuttered closed. "No."_

_She sighed. It was chilled like the autumn wind. "Good." A fingertip traced his jaw. "Come. This place is not for you. Not for us. We are bound now, you and I. And you are still being reborn."_

 

***

 

In the years that followed, the rage never completely left him. An unending holy fire with flames licking at the corner of his mind, hissing hatred and anger and destruction.

It consumed him at times. When it did, it always left him to stare at the bodies or wrecked furniture surrounding him, with only a hazy memory of how he got there.

But Shado was always there, watching. Waiting.

_Her arms snaked around his neck and shoulders._

_"Monster. Demon. Killer. Death." None of it was condemnation, and it calmed him, stilling the tremors of his body. She hummed with blessed approval. Her cheek pressed against his. "My love."_

 

***

 

"Oliver must suffer for his sins. His betrayal of us. His cowardice. His cruelty. His stupidity. He must pay for it all," she explained as she tells him all of the pain and horror Oliver is going through. He never questioned how she knew.

She told him of Oliver still on Lian Yu, hurt and broken. Oliver alone and mad. Oliver tortured beyond recognition. Oliver burning. Oliver drowning. Oliver stabbed over and over again. Oliver pierced by arrows. Oliver brought close to death, but never quite as he doesn't deserve that honor or mercy.

When he dreams, Slade sees it all, and he knows the truth in Shado's words.

_"It is only just," Shado said._

 

***

 

The day the news aired about Oliver's miraculous return to Starling City, Slade razed everything within a one mile radius into the ground. The blood and screams around him barely registered on his senses. His mind and body were simply one inferno. Nothing existed but the roar that propelled him forward.

_It ended as abruptly as it started._

_As he dragged smoke and death into his lungs, he felt it all shift. The unending fire that had been in him for the past four years had changed. It was now ice. Brutal and cold. It still burned._

_"Ah, my love."_

_Chilled hands cupped his jaw. He opened his eyes, not recalling when he'd closed them._

_"_ You _are finally reborn."_

 _Framed in amber light from the fires that still burned around them, Shado herself radiated moonglow-silver. She was breathtaking, and she was his, and he was hers. There would be nothing he could deny her now. They would burn the world for her pleasure._ He _would burn for her pleasure._

 

***

 

_Isabel's carefully manicured fingernails tapped against the table. The woman studied the dossiers in front her. Both Sebastian and Isabel were means to an end, but there was something about Isabel that made think Slade of Isabel as… almost kindred._

_"Why aren't we attacking these two?" she asked. "If you want to hurt Oliver--"_

_"It's not about simply hurting Oliver," Slade said. Her finger had rested upon a surveillance photograph of Oliver's team. "It's about punishing him for his sins."_

_Isabel's lips curled downward. "But--"_

_"The sins of the father are yours to seek retribution on; the sins of the son are mine." It wasn't the first time Isabel had tried to bring the matter up, to take a more direct approach at hurting Oliver. She held her gaze with only just the briefest displeasure and then dipped her head in acceptance._

_With the matter closed, Slade got up and went back to his personal offices. Isabel was familiar enough by now not to question or comment on the moments he took to be by himself. Perhaps she even understood he wasn't really by himself. The damned were never really ever alone._

_But what sweet damnation it was._

_"They're us, you know," Shado said. The comparison hadn't escaped him. In the year that Oliver had returned, the kid had allied himself with John Diggle and Felicity Smoak, and the discovery had nearly made Slade laugh._

_"Is that why you won't attack them?" Shado asked. He sat down and she drew up behind him. "The real sin there is theirs."_

_The sin of trusting and believing in Oliver. They would pay for it without any intervention. Just as he and Shado had paid for their sin in befriending Oliver. The people who loved Oliver were victims. The collateral damage was among those Slade had chosen to punish Oliver for Oliver's sins; not theirs._

In the end, though, he'd underestimated them. He wouldn't again.

 

***

 

Slade opened his eyes.

Shado stood before him, his dark phoenix. No death could claim her.

He wouldn't speak. Not when his words could be observed by those who didn't deserve to know. So, he merely thought them. _You're here._

"Always."

 

**Author's Note:**

> This beast was a nightmare in more ways than one. The first 800 words were almost ripped from my fingers, and then I had to fight and crawl the rest of the way. It was structural nightmare with the flashbacks and the past/past perfect tenses. Also, Slade. A lot of meta discussion (about his character arc problems) probably helped inspired this fic, too. I guess I was trying to address some of them... or if I didn't manage to do that, I wanted to answer the pressing question, _Who is feeding Slade on Lian Yu?_. Except, haha, I just realized I technically didn't.


End file.
